The Sun Also Rises

by Ernest Hemingway

Chapter 1
The narrator, Jake Barnes, describes Robert Cohn, who was a middleweight boxing champion in
college at Princeton University. Born into an old, rich Jewish family, Cohn had an easy childhood.
But at Princeton he was made to feel like an outsider because he was Jewish. He took up boxing in
response to his resulting feelings of inferiority. He liked knowing he could knock down anyone
being nasty to him, though he never actually fought anyone outside the gym. Jake comments that he
naturally distrusts anyone who seems as simple and honest as Cohn, but after some checking around
he did verify that Cohn was in fact what he said he was. Cohn emerged from college shy and self-
conscious, and quickly married the first girl who was nice to him. He had three children in five
unhappy years during which he lost much of a fifty-thousand dollar inheritance left to him by his
father. Finally, just as Cohn was deciding to leave his wife, she left him for another man. Cohn
moved to California after the divorce. He fell in with a literary crowd and began to fund an art
magazine, and soon made himself its editor. Meanwhile, he was "taken in hand" by a woman named
Frances, whom he thought he loved, but who hoped to climb the social ladder as the magazine
became better known. When the magazine failed, Frances decided to get what she could from Cohn,
and got him to take her to Europe. They settled in Paris. Cohn lives on an allowance from his
mother and has two friends: Braddock, his literary friend, and Jake, with whom he plays tennis.
Cohn is "fairly happy," except that like many other people in Europe he would rather be living in
America. He writes a novel and fills his days reading, playing cards and tennis, and boxing. At this
same time, Frances realizes that she's losing her good looks and shifts from treating Cohn carelessly
to trying to get him to marry her. Jake notices this change in Frances when, one night, Jake, Cohn,
and Frances go out to dinner together. Cohn suggests he and Jake take a trip to get out of Paris and
do some hiking. Jake says he knows a girl in Strasbourg who can show them around, but gets a few
kicks under the table from Cohn and an angry look from Frances before he realizes his error. Later,
Cohn walks Jake out of the café and scolds Jake for making Frances jealous. Any mention of any
girl will set off Frances, Cohn says, to Jake's disbelief. Cohn then worries that Jake is "sore" with
him, but Jake assures him he isn't. They decide to go to Senlis instead of Strasbourg. Despite all the
silly drama, Jake comments that he likes Cohn.

Analysis
Jake introduces Cohn first and puts himself in the background, setting the pattern of Jake trying to
avoid his own story. Note how Cohn responds to feelings of insecurity by finding refuge in sports,
but also how he is too honorable to every actually use those skills outside the sporting arena. Note
also that Cohn's past does not include fighting in WWI. That Jake mistrusts simplicity and honesty
suggests the depths of Jake's skepticism of everything, and also suggests that he himself is not being
entirely honest about himself. Cohn married not for love, but rather on the rebound from a tough
college experience. Note that Cohn did the traditional thing upon leaving college: he got married.
He also then tried to do the honorable thing in resisting leaving his wife for as long as he did. Both
following tradition and being honorable ended up badly for him. Cohn assumes that being in a
relationship with someone must mean you love them. He's deluded by tradition and romantic ideals
of love. Frances isn't—she's in it to get something for herself. Frances continues to use Cohn.
Europe was supposed to provide an artistic escape, but none of the Americans actually seem to like
being there. Yet for some reason they can't seem to return to America either. They're lost, unable to
escape and unable to find home. The male relationships are defined by activities with competition at
their heart. Frances's desire for marriage is purely practical and self-serving. The men of the novel

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often seem to be at the mercy of the women, and the desire to take a trip into the countryside, into
nature, is in some ways a desire to escape from women (who in the novel tend to stay in the city).
The desire for change purely for itself also characterizes the Lost Generation. Jake's relentless
interest in Cohn shows us that Cohn is an important mirror through which we come to know Jake.
He is competitive and literary but also very different because he was not in the war.

Chapter 2
That winter, Robert Cohn takes his novel to America and it is accepted by a publisher, and several
women are nice to him while he's in New York. He comes back changed, more aware of his
attractiveness, and less pleasant. His new popularity and the praise he gets for his novel have gone
to his head and his horizons have changed. After being focused on Frances for four years, he now
sees beyond her. Cohn is at the same time having a lucky streak with bridge, and becomes vain
about this too, boasting that, if necessary, he could make a living from playing cards. He also
becomes obsessed by a book called The Purple Land, a romantic tale about an English gentleman
traveling abroad, which Jake says is a dangerous text to take seriously too late in life. Cohn is doing
exactly that. He seems to be taking it as a guidebook for life. Jake realizes how affected Cohn has
been by the book when Cohn comes to Jake's office and asks him to go with him to South America.
Jake responds that everything he could want is already in Paris and that all countries look like they
do in films, but Cohn persists. He keeps saying that he is wasting his life and that he needs to go to
South America. Jake responds that only bullfighters live their lives to the fullest. Jake suggests they
have a drink, intending to then leave Cohn in the bar and come back to the office. Cohn continues
the same argument in the bar, saying that they will be dead in thirty-five years, which angers Jake.
Jake tells Cohn, from personal experience, that you can't escape yourself just by moving from place
to place. But Jake decides this argument is useless because these ideas are stuck in Cohn's head
from, Jake assumes, books like The Purple Land. Jake excuses himself to return to his office. Cohn
asks to come and sit with him. While Jake works, Cohn falls asleep. Later, wanting to go home for
the night, Jake touches Cohn's shoulder to wake him and hears Cohn sleep-talking, saying things
like 'I can't do it'. When he wakes up, Cohn admits it was a bad dream and says that he didn't sleep
the night before because of "talking". Jake imagines this talking must involve a "bedroom scene"
and says he has a bad habit of imagining these scenes of his friends. They go out again for a drink
and to watch the crowds.

Analysis
As Cohn becomes successful, his "love" for Frances evaporates. Relationships are changeable,
dependent on travel and activity and status, rather than love or sexual passion. The change of Cohn
from self-conscious to arrogant transforms his role in the group, making him a masculine
competitor. The Lost Generation lives by playing games and gambling. Success and happiness is as
superficial and temporary as a good or a bad game of bridge. Despite his success, Cohn continues to
believe in romance, chivalry, and adventure. Jake, having experienced the war, views these as false
and dangerous ideas. Cohn wants to life a full life. Jake thinks any such desire is ridiculous—that
the only way to live life to the fullest is to constantly face death, as the bullfighters do. This
suggests that WWI affected its veterans not just by stealing their belief in nearly everything, but
also by being so intense that nothing else feels real. Though Jake advises Cohn not to try to avoid
himself as it doesn't work, he continues to avoid hard truths himself, as indicated by his anger when
Cohn forces him to briefly confront the idea of death. Jake's comment that all cities look like they
do in films is profoundly skeptical, as he is basically saying that nothing is real, or any more real
than fictional representations of it. The masculine competition and insecurity changes here as Cohn
appears like a child having a nightmare, and Jake, watching over him, like a father. Traditionally,
men were supposed to "do" things. Cohn's being unable to "do it" is a nightmare of masculine
insecurity. Now, instead of doing things, the men are always "talking," a traditionally more feminine

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activity. Jake, meanwhile, imagines the bedroom scenes of his friends, but none of them actually
discuss these issues. They talk without any real content, and further avoid any real issues by going
out to drink and people-watch.

Chapter 3
After Cohn leaves, Jake goes by himself to a café and watches the crowds. He is interested by the
poules, a French slang term for prostitutes, and watches one after another walk by. One good-
looking poule catches his eye and sits down with him at his table and orders a Pernod, which Jake
says is not good for "little girls." The poule asks for the drink herself in French. She asks Jake if he's
going on to a party, and he agrees as if it's the only thing to be doing, but she is unsure. She says she
doesn't like Paris but that there's nowhere else. The girl asks if Jake is going to buy her dinner.
When she smiles, Jake sees that she has bad teeth, which puts him off. But they catch a horse-pulled
cab and drive past the shops of the Avenue de l'Opera. As the cab moves through the streets, the girl
uses the opportunity to make sexual overtures to Jake, but he rejects them. She asks if he's sick. He
says that he is, and the girl responds that everyone is sick. She tells Jake that her name is Georgette.
Georgette dislikes the restaurant they arrive at and Jake remembers how dull poules can be.
Georgette cheers up when she sees the food and they start drinking, clinking glasses like a real
couple. Georgette cheers up about Jake too, saying it's a shame he got hurt in the "dirty war." Jake
says he is so bored that he wouldn't even mind talking about the war, but is interrupted by his friend
Braddocks calling out to him. He sees a group of his friends, including Frances and Robert Cohn
sitting at another table. Jake's friends ask him to come dancing with them. Jake returns to Georgette
and describes his friends to her as "writers and artists," then takes her into the room, introducing her
to everybody as his fiancé, Georgette Leblanc, which is the name of a famous singer. Everyone is
confused. They arrive too early at the dance hall, which is nearly empty, with only the owner and
his family inside. The proprietor starts playing the accordion and the group starts dancing. The club
starts to fill up and soon becomes hot and sweaty. While Georgette is asked to dance, Jake stands at
the club door, feeling the breeze and watching a group of men arrive along with someone he knows:
Lady Brett Ashley, a beautiful woman with short hair. The men in Brett's group have spotted
Georgette and are talking about dancing with her as if for a dare. These men, who are "supposed to
be amusing", annoy Jake. He walks to the club next door to get a drink, but the drink tastes sour and
he comes back. Upon his return, Georgette is surrounded by men on the dance floor and Jake knows
that they will all take their turn with her. Jake sits at a table with his friends and meets a novelist
called Robert Prentiss. Jake insists on getting Prentiss a drink and when asked about Paris, Jake says
that he likes it. He admits he is drunk and loses his temper with the question. Prentiss thinks this is
charming. Jake gets up and goes to the dance floor. Frances follows Jake, thinking he is angry, but
Jake insists he is sick. Jake says that the "whole show" makes him sick. Brett walks over to Jake. As
they greet each other, Jake notices Cohn looking at the "damned good-looking" Brett, as if towards
the "promised land." Brett jokes with Jake about bringing the poule to the club, while Jake
comments on the "fine crowd" that Brett has brought with her. Brett responds that they are men she
can safely get drunk around. Cohn then approaches and asks Brett to dance but Brett says it's been
promised to Jake. As they dance, Jake scolds Brett for collecting crushes, such as the one Cohn now
has on her. In the heat, and amid the accordion music of the bar, Jake admits feeling happy. Brett
suggests she and Jake go to a different club. Jake leaves fifty francs in an envelope at the bar for
Georgette. Jake and Brett wait quietly at a nearby car until a taxi arrives. When a taxi does arrive,
Brett tells Jake to make the cab "drive around." Jake instructs the driver to do so, and then follows
Brett into the cab. Once the cab starts to move, Brett confesses that she has been "so miserable."

Analysis
Jake watches the scene and avoids his own thoughts. He condescends to the girl but she's the one at
home in Paris, speaking the language. They discuss the party not as something that they might

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actually enjoy, but rather as a something they have to attend. And in fact Jake does have to go,
because it's the only way he knows to escape and distract himself from his own thoughts. This
"date" is a sham—Jake is looking for amusement, the poule for dinner and money. When she
smiles, shows actual emotion, she is no longer pretty. The girl is a prostitute—she makes an
advance because she wants to make money. The reader knows that Jake is not sick, raising the
question of why he rejects her advances. At the same time, the sickness describes everything,
sadness, injury, and the whole uneasy world of post-WWI society. Georgette is completely
materialistic. At the same time, how different is she from Frances? They both want money, not love,
out of relationships. Yet Jake, unlike Cohn, sees through the façade. That Jake is so bored he
wouldn't mind talking about the war indicates how much he normally does mind talking about it.
And, once again, the social scene manages to distract Jake from actually having to think about the
war. The group obsessively seeks to live a life of pure leisure. Jake groups them into an identity of
"writers and artists" but they don't live up to those identities—they never seem to create anything.
In fact the only identity that seems stable is of avoiding identity. The lack of identity in the
characters is driven home by Jake's joke, which makes Georgette into someone recognizable. The
sight of the family that owns the club is a reminder that the characters of the Lost Generation don't
really have families. They have only their friends, with whom they avoid discussing anything
important. In the dance, the heat and rhythm creates a kind of closeness between people, but it's not
something that lasts beyond the night. It's a distraction. Brett's short hair hints at her untraditional
femininity—in many ways she acts like a man. Though never stated explicitly, the novel strongly
implies that the men with Brett are gay. That the men annoy Jake so strongly indicates his own
masculine insecurity. Meanwhile, the atmosphere is completely unromantic and transactional:
Georgette is treated like a poker chip. Male writers in the novel are repeatedly meeting other male
writers and masculine competition is renewed, but never resolved. Jake sees that the social scene is
empty – the others seem to believe in it, Jake sees through it. At the same time, Jake has been totally
unflappable until Brett arrived. Now he is more mercurial. Clearly she affects him. While the reader
realizes how much Brett's presence has affected Jake's mood, he deflects his feelings for her onto
the other male characters, reflecting more on Cohn's crush than his own. For her part, Brett plays
along with the typical feminine rituals of accepting dances, but her banter with Jake is decisively
masculine. It's worth noting how Cohn wanted to travel to a foreign land, and how that language is
now fulfilled in Brett as "the promised land," implying Cohn now sees her as the way toward a fully
lived life. Brett is magnetic, and Jake follows after her. In contrast, Jake pays for Georgette with a
sense of duty but no feeling of affection attached. The Lost Generation seem only able to open up
when they're moving, even if it's just in a cab. When Brett does open up, it is revealed that even she
is deeply unhappy, despite the whole "show" at the club.

Chapter 4
Brett and Jake's cab winds through the streets of Paris. As they pass the lights of bars and workmen
fixing the car tracks, Jake notices how Brett's face comes in and out of view. In the dark, they kiss,
but Brett pulls away, begging Jake to understand. Jake asks if she loves him and she "turns all to
jelly." But as they discuss the "hell" of what it was like the last time they were together, Jake
decides that they should stay away from each other. Brett disagrees, commenting that she's now
paying for the hell she puts other men through all the time. They talk about how injuries like Jake's
are supposed to be funny, but how "nobody knows anything." Jake says he rarely thinks about his
injury, but agrees that it is funny, and fun to be in love, but Brett persists that it's hell. She says that
it's not about wanting to see Jake but about having to. As they near the club where they are going,
Brett asks Jake to kiss her once more before they arrive. Brett is shaky as they leave the cab, but
they gather themselves and go in to find the same crowd from the last club. In the club, a painter
named Zisi approaches Brett in order to introduce her to a man named Count Mippipopolous, who
has taken a liking to her. Meanwhile, Jake talks with Braddocks, but all Jake wants to do is go

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home. When he says goodnight to Brett, she's drinking with the Count, and asks to see Jake again
the following day. Jake agrees even though he thinks she probably won't show up. He then asks
Brett whether she's heard from Mike. When she says she has, Jake leaves the bar and walks along
the boulevards, walking past acquaintances but not stopping because he wants to get home. On the
way, Jake passes a statue of a soldier, Marshal Ney, which he thinks looks "very fine." When Jake
arrives at his building he picks up his mail from the concierge, including a wedding announcement
for a couple he's never heard of before. His thoughts circle back to Brett, and he curses her for
coming up in his mind again. As Jake undresses for bed he looks at himself naked in the mirror and
sees his wound, and claims to see the funny side as he is supposed to. Jake goes to bed and reads
through two bullfighting newspapers. He then turns out the lamp, but is unable to sleep and he
thinks about his injury. He remembers the Italian hospital where several men with the same injury
thought about setting up a society. He remembers the "first funny thing," when a colonel came to
visit him and gave a serious speech about how Jake had given more than his life. Jake comments
that he always just played along, but that it was meeting Brett that caused him trouble, and, like all
people, she only wanted what she couldn't have. Jake starts to cry. After a while, he falls asleep.
Loud noises outside his room wake Jake in the middle of the night. Downstairs, he finds the
concierge dealing with a drunken Brett. Jake brings Brett up to his apartment, where Brett tells him
that the count is waiting outside in his car. She tells Jake about the count's many connections and his
chain of sweetshops in America, and how the count offered her ten thousand dollars to go to
Biarritz, or Cannes, or Monte Carlo with him. But Brett refused because she knew too many people
in all those places. And when she told the count she was in love with Jake, the count has invited
them for a drive the next day. Jake agrees to go for the drive, but refuses to get dressed and come
down to the car to carry on the evening with the count and Brett. Brett and Jake kiss goodbye. As he
watches Brett leave from the window, he pours himself another drink and goes to bed, knowing that
he'll think about Brett again and feel like crying—it's easy to be "hard-boiled" in the daytime, he
admits, but night is a different thing, he admits.

Analysis
In the presence of Brett, the city of Paris becomes beautiful to Jake. Her presence seems to give
what he sees more meaning. It's clear that there is real love behind Jake and Brett's relationship, but
there's also something that's standing in the way of them being together (though exactly what isn't
totally evident yet). Even so, this love is not something Brett or Jake can give up. Now the obstacle
to their relationship begins to make sense—Jake received a war wound of some kind that, it is
implied, makes him impotent. Brett and Jake's love is therefore separated from sex, and for Brett
this stands in the way of their being together. Note how Jake's comments about not thinking about
his war wound ring false, and also how Brett hates having anything that forces her to do anything,
even love. She wants to be free above all else. And then they escape having to talk about any of
these tough things by jumping back into the social scene at a club, which is essentially the same as
the last club. For Jake, Brett's presence transforms the social scene into one of constant competition
that because of his injury he can't win. The very thing Jake has been using to distract himself from
the war and his injury now pushes it back into his face, so he leaves. The soldier on horseback is of
a general from Napoleonic times and radiates the ideals of wartime glory and masculine courage
and honor that WWI forever destroyed. The wedding with a couple Jake doesn't know shows both
the emptiness of his acquaintances and the foreign-ness of marriage to the Lost Generation. But the
wedding also pushes Jake's thoughts back to Brett, back to his injury, and back to his habitual
avoidance of those things. Jake uses sports to distract himself. And when he must finally sleep he
tries to distance himself from his sadness by seeing it as funny, but his insomnia and eventual tears
shows that avoidance is only helpful for a while. You can't hide from yourself forever. Note that
Jake's injury didn't cause him true sadness until he fell in love with Brett, until he truly wanted
something meaningful—this is the danger of love—it makes you vulnerable to pain. Brett

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disregards social norms. She just does what she wants, and doesn't care about what society will
think or traditional ideas of proper feminine behavior. The Counts offer of money puts Brett in the
role of a prostitute, but she doesn't seem to be bothered by that. Like Georgette, like Frances, she
seems to accept that relationships and sex are just another transaction, except for her love with Jake,
that is. The Count seems equally untroubled, and is just as happy whisking Brett off on a trip and
going for a ride with Jake, her love. The repetitive pattern between Jake and Brett of touching and
parting, touching and parting, defines both the nature of their love (which they wish could be
physical but can't be) but also their inability to actually face and accept those facts one way or
another. Jake responds to this traumatic experience as he does to nearly every other one—he looks
for distraction in a drink. But as Jake's comment about the night vs. the daytime indicates, at night
there is no larger social world to provide additional distraction, Ultimately, you must sleep and in
doing so face your thoughts. Jake can only be "hard-boiled" when he has the normal daytime
distractions to help him avoid his own thoughts.

Chapter 5
The next morning, Jake walks to work, watching the women selling flowers, students going to class,
and the trams moving about. Jake finds it pleasant to be going to work with everyone else. Jake
works through the morning at his office, then goes to a meeting with other newsmen whom he
describes as liking the sound of their own voices. "There was no news", Jake reports. He then takes
a cab back to the office with two of his colleagues, who talk about bars and tennis. One of the men,
Krumm, says he'll soon quit working and be able to get out to see the country. They all agree that
going out to see the country is the best thing to do. In his office, Jake finds Cohn waiting for him.
Cohn asks Jake to lunch. At the restaurant, Jake asks if Cohn had fun last night and Cohn says he
doesn't think so. He says that his next book is going badly, and at the mention of South America, he
says that Frances is keeping him from going, and that she wouldn't like it there but he can't "tell her
to go to hell" because of "certain obligations" to her. Cohn then asks Jake about Lady Brett Ashley.
Jake tells him what he knows: that she's getting a divorce and marrying a Scotsman named Mike
Campbell. Cohn can't stop talking about Brett's beauty and says he thinks he might be in love with
her. Annoyed, Jake responds that she's a drunk and is going to marry Mike, who's going to inherit a
lot of money. Cohn asks how long Jake has known her. Jake says they met in the war, when she was
a V.A.D (a kind of volunteer nurse). She met her first husband in the war too, her "own true love"
having died of dysentery. Cohn accuses Jake of sounding bitter, and. Jake tells Cohn to go to hell.
Cohn stands up from the table and demands that Jake take back what he said about going to hell.
Jake calls this "prep school stuff' but he tells Cohn not to go to hell. Cohn sits back down again.
Jake admits to having a "nasty tongue," and tells Cohn not to believe the nasty things he says. Cohn
responds that Jake his best friend. As they leave the restaurant, Jake senses that Cohn wants to bring
up Brett again but he manages to avoid having that conversation and the two part ways for the day.

Analysis
In the daytime, among the crowd and its distractions, being on the move and a part of a larger group
of people he doesn't know, Jake can escape his sadness. Work is easy and without purpose. The lack
of news describes the emptiness of life after the intense business of the war. The men focus on
leisure pursuits to avoid this empty purposelessness, but their desire for nature, to get back to the
country, to something more real, betrays their need for escape. Cohn's comment that he doesn't
think he had fun highlights the fact that he's not sure. The character's social activities seem fun if
you don't look too close, but are so constant and repetitive that they become empty. Robert would
like to leave Frances, but just as with his first wife his sense of honor holds him back. Each
competitor for Brett's affection is insecure. There is a constant turnover of men, making loss
inevitable. Divorce follows marriage and marriage follows divorce. War is the place of true love.
Brett and Jake are both stuck in the past of the war where their most meaningful relationships and

6
losses occurred and everything was important. Jake's anger stems from being forced by Cohn to
face up to how his own love for Brett affects his behavior. Cohn's anger at being told to go to hell
hints at the traditional values he still holds onto—he still believes in hell. The other characters, who
fought in the war, don't believe in hell, perhaps because the war itself was their hell. Cohn also
believes in friendship, though that doesn't feel like exactly the right term for what he and Jake share.

Chapter 6
That night, Jake goes to meet Brett at a hotel. She stands him up. After looking around for her a
little bit, Jake decides to go to a café, the Select. He gets into a cab and, on the way to the café,
crosses the river and watches the barges and notes that it's "pleasant crossing bridges in Paris." The
taxi comes to a certain boulevard that Jake always finds "dull riding." Jake thinks that it must be
some "association of ideas" that makes parts of journeys dull, and guesses that probably something
he read in a book is affecting him now. At the Select, he finds a friend of his, Harvey Stone, who
says he's been looking for Jake. Jake asks him about the States, but Harvey says he's heard nothing
and is "through with them." He then confesses that he hasn't eaten for five days, and is broke. Even
though Harvey beat Jake at poker three days earlier and won two hundred francs, Jake offers him a
hundred. Harvey accepts, and they have a drink. As the two of them talk and drink, they spot Cohn,
who is waiting for Frances. Harvey insults Cohn, calling him a moron, and then asks him about
what he would choose to do if he could do anything. When Cohn tentatively decides on football,
Harvey takes back the "moron" comment and decides instead that Cohn is a case of "arrested
development." Cohn warns that someone will hit him in the face one day. Harvey says it doesn't
matter, that Cohn means nothing to him. Jake tries to offer him another drink but Harvey leaves.
Cohn says his writing isn't going very well, that it's harder than the first time. Jake, as narrator,
comments that until Cohn fell in love with Brett, he was good at sports and had a boyish, cheerful
"undergraduate quality." He had been trained by both Princeton and the two women in his life, but
this cheerfulness had not been trained out of him. He loved to win tennis games, for example, but
stopped winning when he met Brett. Frances arrives, and asks to speak privately with Jake. When
they're alone, she tells Jake that Cohn has refused to marry her, saying that he just can't do it. She
worries that no one will marry her now because she's too old, and adds that she won't even get
alimony from her first husband because she divorced him as quickly as possible in order to be with
Robert. Jake offers cautious sympathy, and Frances adds that the real reason Cohn won't marry her
is because he wants to enjoy all the "chickens" that will flock to him when his book is a success.
Back with Cohn, Frances, with obviously sarcastic cheerfulness, tells Jake that Cohn has given her
two hundred francs and is sending her to England in order to get rid of her in a clean, easy way.
Originally, she adds, Cohn was going to give her one hundred francs, but she made him give more.
Frances continues to rant, and Jake eventually excuses himself, saying he has to go meet Harvey.

Analysis
Brett never follows social conventions, such as showing up for appointments. She does what she
wants. Seeing the water brings pleasure to Jake. It's a reminder of nature amid the city. The
associations of ideas are dangerous for Jake. He is always trying to avoid thinking or remembering,
but one idea leading to the next can bring him back without him realizing it to thinking about things
he wants to avoid. Harvey is another of the "writers and artists" who neither writes nor produces art.
He's unstable, unhealthy, doing nothing in Europe but completely disconnected from the United
States, his home. Both he and Jake treat relationships as a transaction, as a thing to get you what
you want, whether it's money or distraction. Harvey and Cohn's insecurities come up against each
other. Harvey mocks Cohn, but Cohn is the only one who is writing. Harvey further laughs at
Cohn's belief in football as something worth spending your life doing, but is Harvey's constant
drunkenness any more mature? Harvey's insistence that Cohn doesn't matter is undermined by his
obvious preoccupation with him. For his part, Cohn says that someone should punch Harvey, but he

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holds on to his sense of honor and doesn't do it himself. Insecurity and judgment fill the air around
the male characters. Jake, like all of the other male war veterans, see Cohn's lack of skepticism as
juvenile and immature. Jake then connects Cohn's loss of cheerfulness and optimism as connected
to a loss of athletic success, and implies that all of these losses occur because he falls in love with
Brett, making everything else seem less meaningful. To Frances, marriage means money and social
capital. To Robert, it is literally a nightmare (remember his nightmare of saying "I can't do it" back
in Jake's office in Chapter 2)? Yet Frances's ideas of why Cohn won't marry her seem incorrect. He
doesn't seem all that interested in chasing women. He's still chasing love. Frances' rants illuminate
the extent of Cohn's at times childlike, at times businesslike approach to love. Not only does Cohn
want to travel to escape, he sends Frances away too, as if to move solves everything. For Frances,
everything always comes down to money.

Chapter 7
When Jake gets back to his flat, he learns from the concierge that Brett and the count had stopped
by, and will return in an hour. They do, with the count bringing roses and Brett finding a jug to put
them in. Jake asks Brett about standing him up. She claims she didn't remember because she was
drunk, which Jake doesn't believe. Jake makes Brett pour her own drink while he goes to dress.
When Brett follows Jake into his room, he tells her he loves her. Brett asks if she should send the
count away. Jake says no, but she does send the count out to get some champagne, which is one of
his passions. Alone now, Jake asks if they can't just live together, or go to the country. Brett
responds that she can't live quietly in the country and doesn't understand why men like to live
quietly. She adds that she would just make Jake miserable, and says she's going away to San
Sebastian because it will be better for them both. She says she's leaving tomorrow. The count
returns with champagne, commenting that no one in the U.S. knows good wine anymore, but he has
a friend in the business, a baron. This leads to a discussion about the usefulness having a title, and
then to the count asserting that even if Brett didn't have a title, she'd still have more class than
anyone. He is not joking, he says. Joking leads to enemies. Brett responds that the only person she
never jokes with is Jake. Then she turns to drinking again. The count wishes he could hear her talk
instead drink. Brett suggests a toast, but the count dislikes mixing up emotion with good wine, as it
affects the taste. Their conversation leads to the count telling a bit about his life: he's experienced
seven wars and four revolutions, been shot by arrows on a business trip in Abyssinia. Living such a
full life, he says, makes him able to enjoy everything, and gives him a knowledge of values. Brett
questions what happens to his values when he's in love, which the count says is all the time. She
says that he hasn't got values. The count genially disagrees. They enjoy a good meal, during which
the count tells Jake and Brett that they should get married. The two of them respond with quick,
evasive answers. When Brett wants another drink, the count insists on buying the most antique
brandy. The three of them continue the night at a dancing club. The count tells Brett and Jake how
nice they look dancing, saying he doesn't dance himself but enjoys watching them. While they
dance, they discuss Brett's coming marriage to Mike, which Brett says will happen as soon as her
divorce comes through. Jake offers her money for the wedding but she responds that Michael's
people have money. Soon, Brett announces that she is miserable and wants to leave. Jake takes Brett
home, while the count prefers to stay a little longer at the club. When they reach Brett's place, she
stops Jake from coming up. They kiss a number of times, but then she pushes him away. Jake takes
the taxi home and goes to bed.

Analysis
The count immediately stands out because, with him, Brett takes on the classic feminine role of
finding a vase to hold flower brought by a man. The count, therefore, seems like a traditional man.
Characters constantly use alcohol as an excuse, as a way to either forget through drunkenness or as
a plausible alibi when they are not drunk but still trying to avoid life. Note how, unlike the count,

8
Jake does not take the traditional male role: he makes Brett make her own drink. Also note how,
while every character drinks, the count actually likes alcohol. He drinks champagne not to try to
forget anything, but because he enjoys it. He is different from the Lost Generation. There's a sense
that the war has made men desire a quiet life. Brett instead shows the typical youthful male desires
of noise and drinks. Every solution to their problems involves escaping to somewhere else. The
count and Brett belong to a class of people with titles, but the count recognizes that Brett's "class"
truly comes from some intangible charisma and beauty. The count's comment about joking seems
genuine. He is being honest. The sadness of Jake being the only one Brett is honest with but also the
one she can't be with is powerful. Brett once again turns to drinking as an escape, a fact that the
count points out. While Jake tries to be stoic, meaning he endures what is difficult, the count is
more of an epicurean, who seeks to enjoy life. The other characters all drink to drown their sadness.
They drink in order to mix alcohol and emotion. The count drinks because he enjoys it. The count is
also a veteran of WWI, but for him it wasn't a singular, formative experienced. It was just another
war. Brett sees love as something that compels you to act in ways you otherwise wouldn't, as
something that destroys your values. But the count doesn't see love as something controls you. He
sees it as a pleasure, and therefore not as something that destroys values. Though Jake and Brett are
good humored about the count telling them to marry, they still change the subject. The count doesn't
just drink—he drinks only the best. Brett's encouragement of Mike and Jake's rivalry and Jake's
adoption of a fatherly, money-giving role are all tricks of denial of the real situation of loss, which
eventually overwhelms them. Once again, the count stays at the club because he actually enjoys
going out. He's not doing it to hide from anything. Jake and Brett part in their same old fashion,
kissing, then pushing away. It's a rut they can't seem to escape, because if only Jake weren't injured
they have the sense that everything would be so good…

Chapter 8
Jake doesn't see Brett or Cohn for a good long while. He receives one brief, appropriately warm
postcard from Brett in San Sebastian, and a note from Cohn, who says he's left Paris for the
countryside. Meanwhile, Jake's friend and fellow veteran Bill Gorton arrives from the U.S. with
plans to visit Budapest and Vienna and then to go to Spain with Jake to go fishing and to the
Pamplona fiesta. Bill is full of good spirits in his descriptions of the U.S., but when returns from
Vienna three weeks later he is less cheerful. Bill reports that he got so drunk in Vienna that he can't
remember any of the four days he spent there. Then he does remember one thing: a boxing match,
in which a "wonderful nigger" knocked out a local boy, and its aftermath. As they walk around Paris
looking for a restaurant, Bill tells Jake about a man he was drinking with earlier in the day whose
secret is never being "daunted." Jake says Harvey Stone was daunted, and now doesn't sleep and
goes off like a cat all the time. They agree not to get daunted. Suddenly they see Brett in a passing
taxi. She stops the cab and gets out, reporting that she's just back from San Sebastian and that Mike
is following later in the day. Jake insists they all meet that night. Brett says she was an ass to leave
and that she didn't do anything in San Sebastian. After Brett leaves, Jake comments that she is soon
going to marry Mike and Bill jokes that he always meets girls in that stage of life. Bill and Jake eat
dinner at a restaurant that's full of Americans, mainly because it has a review calling it "untouched
by Americans." Bill had eaten there in 1918 just after the war ended and the owner fusses over him.
She also asks Jake why he never comes to eat there. He replies that there are too many of his
compatriots. Before going to meet Brett and Mike, Jake and Bill go for a walk. They cross the Seine
and see Notre Dame cathedral from the river. Bill says that he loves to get back to Paris. They pass
a bar, but Bill says he doesn't need a drink so they just keep on walking. When Jake and Bill get to
the bar, Brett introduces Mike as a drunkard. Mike is, in fact, drunk, and he keeps commenting
about how beautiful and wonderful Brett is. Conversation turns to a boxing match going on that
night, but Mike says he'd prefer not to go, as he "has a date." Jake and Bill head off to the fight, and
as they leave Jake notices Brett looking happy as she scolds Mike and takes him home.

9
Analysis
Bill, who returned to the United States after the war rather than staying in Europe, is more cheerful
than the expatriate veterans. But Bill's cheeriness evaporates as he stays in Europe—the separation
from home and the memories that Europe brings affect all the veterans of WW1. Bill, like the other
veterans, turns to drinking. The one thing he does remember from his drunken state is a boxing
fight. Hemingway's men are drawn to younger, stronger versions of themselves and are fascinated
by staged violence. Bill Gorton uses jokes to cover horror and fear and insecurity. He teaches Jake
his brand of avoidance. They compare each other on a scale of dauntedness. They cling to a
masculine ideal of fearlessness, but are insecure about it. Jake can't be happy that Brett has returned
with Mike, but he suppresses those feelings in inviting them to dinner. Brett, meanwhile, sees her
entire trip as silly and meaningless, which of course it was. Bill jokes about not meeting women, but
really does seem to regret being alone. Jake doesn't like to see Americans, perhaps because so many
of them did not share his experience of the war that he does not know how to interact with them.
Jake also doesn't like to remember the war. Previous distaste for the city is forgotten when the men
are walking and encounter the majesty of the cathedral and the river. This is one of the only times in
the novel that they don't feel like drinking. But these blissful feelings always disappear once Brett
arrives. The men's attention focuses solely on her and their competition for her. Here the men
deflect their competitive spirit into the acts of drinking and talking about boxing. Jake is jealous of
the way Brett looks at Mike, recognizing it from his own experience with her.

Chapter 9
The next morning, Jake gets a telegraph from Cohn, who says he's in the country having a quiet
time, playing golf and bridge, but is looking forward to the fishing trip to Spain. Jake writes back
that he and Bill will leave in five days and meet Cohn in Bayonne. That night, Jake runs into Brett
and Mike at a bar. Mike apologizes for his drunkenness the evening before, and asks if he and Brett
might come on the Spain trip. Jake politely says that they should come, even as Mike checks
multiple times that he really doesn't mind. Mike then heads off to get a haircut, but not before
commenting that he thinks his hotel might be a brothel and implying that he has a lot of knowledge
of the subject. Brett gently scolds him, and Mike departs. Once they're alone, Brett asks Jake if
Cohn is coming on the trip. When she learns that he is, she worries that it might be too "rough" on
him. Jake is confused, until Brett reveals that she was with Cohn in San Sebastian. She says she did
it because she thought it might be good for Cohn. Annoyed, Jake sarcastically suggests she take up
social service. Brett promises to write to Cohn to give him a chance to decide not to come. Four
days later, Brett tells Jake that she's heard back from Cohn, who wants to come even though he
knows that Brett and Mike will be there too. Jake sets up the plan: Jake and Bill will take the train
to Bayonne, where they will meet with Cohn and then head to Pamplona where they will then meet
with Brett and Mike. Jake and Bill board the train to Bayonne the next morning. The train is very
crowded, and when they try to eat lunch there are no spots because the dining car is full of Catholics
on a pilgrimage. Bill jokes that the scene is "enough to make a man join the Klan." They also meet
an American family on the train. The wife and husband bicker pleasantly back and forth, as couples
do, and the husband tells Jake and Bill that the fishing in Montana is even better than it is in Spain.
The family then goes to try to get some lunch. As the train moves, Bill and Jake "watch the country"
through the window. The fields are ripening and green. After a while the family returns, and the
husband says that it's pity that Jake and Bill aren't Catholics, since they'd be able to get a meal then.
Jake responds that he actually is Catholic, while Bill snaps at one of priests returning from his meal,
asking when Protestants get a chance to eat. They meet Cohn at the station in Bayonne. He is shy
around Bill, because he's read Bill's books. The three of them take a taxi to the Hotel Montoya
where they will be staying.

10
Analysis
The characters always desire somewhere and something new and use each other for those ends. It's
worth pointing out that it will be revealed that Cohn isn't being altogether truthful here, which is
very un-Cohn. Mike's invasion of both Jake's relationship to Brett and Jake's planned fishing trip
could push Jake over the edge, but he doesn't show any upset. Jake, always the stoic, makes sure
that good sportsmanship wins out. But masculine tensions bubble under the surface. Once again,
Jake's stoic façade crumbles in the face of Brett's amorous adventures. Brett's motives in connecting
with Cohn are unclear. She has an idea of morality, but seems ultimately to care most about doing
what she wants as opposed to helping anyone else, despite what she says. Cohn's dishonestly about
his time away is also revealed here. Just as falling in love with Brett robbed Cohn of his
cheerfulness, it also seems to have robbed him of his honesty. Cohn is willing to subject himself to
all sorts of uncomfortable situations in the name of love. Jake seems to find this shocking, but he
does the same thing—he just doesn't seem able to recognize it. The act of planning a trip seems to
cheer everybody, as if they've already started to escape once more. The train, though moving them
toward a new location, is also full of the things the men have been avoiding, like the faith and
security of organized religion and the idea of the typical family. All of this makes the men insecure.
Bill responds to his own unease with typical humor, while Jake retreats into his stoic quietness. Jake
is a Catholic, but he is not like the community of Catholics on the train, and so once again he is
alone. He seems unable to believe as they do—at least he's never before revealed any religious
thoughts at all. Bill responds to his own discomfort with typical biting humor, which masks his
insecurity. A new dynamic is created with the three men. Masculine competition looms with literary
insecurity at stake.

Chapter 10
It's a bright morning and the men have breakfast. They walk over the bridge of the big river and go
to a tackle store to buy supplies and then walked to a cathedral. It is "nice and dim." They hire a cab
for the coming drive to Pamplona, then go to a café for a beer. As the sit outside, there is a pleasant
breeze from the sea. Jake doesn't feel like leaving, but they sort out the money for the rooms. While
they wait for Cohn to finish up in his room, Jake sees a cockroach and they say it must have come
from outdoors, because the hotel was so clean. Cohn joins them and the cab and driver arrives. Soon
they are out in the country, with rolling hills, behind which is the sea. As they cross the Spanish
border their driver has to fill out some papers for the car, so the men go to a stream nearby to check
for trout while they wait. Jake asks a soldier manning the crossing if he ever fishes, but he says he
doesn't. Then, an old man comes to the border and is waved away by the carabineer and turns back
on the road to Spain. The carabineer says he'll wade across the stream. The chauffeur returns and
they drive on, through the country that Jake describes as "really Spain," with forests, plains and
clear streams. Jake spots an old castle in the distance and points it out to Bill. Then, a big river
comes into view and next, the skyline of Pamplona, its old city walls and cathedral. They come into
the town and pass the bullring, which is imposing in the bright sun. They arrive at the Hotel
Montoya. The owner, Montoya, welcomes Jake like an old friend and gives them good rooms. They
eat in the cooler of two dining rooms. Jake says that the first Spanish meal is always a shock, with
its many little courses, demanding a lot of wine. Cohn tries to cancel one of the meat courses. He
seems nervous, and doesn't know that Jake knows about his trip with Brett. Cohn says, with a
superior tone, that he doesn't think Brett and Mike will actually come to Pamplona. Bill and Jake
respond by making a bet. Bill bets they'll arrive that evening. Cohn goes to get a shave and Jake
admits that he thinks Bill has a rotten chance at winning the bet. After the meal, Jake visits the old
man who always gets bullfight tickets for him and is pleased to learn that his tickets are ready for
him. The man can tell that Jake has been in a motor car by the dust on his clothes. Jake is
impressed, and gives the man some extra coins. Jake goes walking and comes across a cathedral.
Though he found it ugly the first time he saw it, now he likes it. It is dim inside, people are praying

11
and Jake decides to pray too. He prays for everyone he knows, and for the bullfighters. He prays for
himself, that it will be a good fiesta, that he will have money. When he thinks about money, his
thoughts begin to wander and he regrets being a bad Catholic. At dinner, Cohn arrives shaved,
shampooed, and nervous. Brett and Mike are due on the train, and Cohn wants to go to the station to
see them in. Jake goes with him. He enjoys Cohn's mood, even though he knows it's lousy of him to
do so. He says Cohn brings out a lousy side of him. When the train comes, Brett and Mike are not in
the crowd. Cohn says he knew they wouldn't be. When they return to the hotel, Bill asks if he can
pay off the bet later. Cohn tells him to forget the bet. He'd rather bet on something else, like the
bullfights. But Jake says to bet on bullfights would be like betting on the war. Economic gain means
nothing in a bullfight. That night they get a card from Brett, saying they've stopped in San
Sebastian. Jake, jealous and angry, spitefully tells Cohn that they send their regards. The men decide
to get the earliest bus the next morning so that they can to the fishing. Later, Cohn announces that
he has decided he won't leave with them. In a confidential tone, he tells Jake that he is afraid that he
gave Brett the impression that he would meet them at San Sebastian. Jake thinks that Cohn is
finding pleasure in sharing the knowledge that something happened between him and Brett. Back at
the hotel, Bill says that Cohn told him all about the date with Brett, which makes Jake angry. Bill
comments that the funny thing about Cohn is that he may be awful but he's also very nice. They
laugh about it. Jake says Brett went with him because she can't be alone. Bill marvels at the things
people do. He wonders why women don't choose him because he has such an honest face. Then he
looks into the mirror and changes his mind. Finally, Jake and Bill decide to unite in their current
dislike of Cohn, and reconfirm their plans to go fishing and have a good time.

Analysis
The change of scene and the proximity of the sea briefly bring the group into a state of harmony.
Competition is at bay. They have a kind of ideal image of the town that for the moment cannot be
marred by invaders like the cockroach. Yet the peace is fleeting—Jake doesn't want to leave, but
times passes and he has plans to fulfill, so he does. The country is natural and calm in dramatic
contrast to the towns that have consumed Jake and the group so far. The soldiers guarding the
border make clear that the after-effects and nationalism of the war still do exist—and their lack of
desire to fish marks their separation from the joys of nature—but the soldiers also only guard the
road, that symbol of civilization. Nature, in the form of the stream, provides an openness that the
soldiers don't police. Jake's comment suggests that the countryside is more honest, more "real" than
the city. Jake said in Chapter 2 that all cities look like they do in the movies, but it seems unlikely
that he would say that about the countryside. Because of Jake's close relationship with Montoya,
they are welcomed as if they are locals, and Jake especially seems to fit in and feel at home with his
special knowledge of the local customs. Cohn, in contrast, doesn't fit in at all. He tries to make the
meal conform to what he wants, rather than experiencing it as it is, and he compensates for his
nervousness by action superior. The mere mention of Brett brings back the competition between the
men in the form of the bet. Jake is impressed by the man's expertise about cars, which is often
prized by men as an aspect of ideal masculinity. Yet the only way Jake knows how to respond is to
pay the man, to turn it into a transaction. He doesn't know how to actually have a relationship. That
Jake used to find the cathedral ugly but now does not suggests that he is changing somehow,
coming to appreciate something about religion that he had lost during the war. That he tries to pray
and regrets becoming a bad catholic suggest the same. His prayers, however, seem somewhat
shallow. As Brett approaches on her train, masculine tensions heighten. Cohn, in love, goes tries to
look his best, even though he expects Brett to disappoint him. He can't help himself. Jake's
amusement at Cohn's behavior is little more than a way for Jake to make himself feel better. He
feels much the same way Cohn does he just doesn't show it. Cohn, in the end, doesn't want to bet on
something that's truly meaningful to him, like love. Jake, meanwhile, feels the same way about
bullfights! He sees them as living on the edge of death, containing a passion and intensity that make

12
them beyond money (unlike most other things in his life). Jake was amused at Cohn's nervousness,
but when Brett doesn't show his own jealousy comes out and he lashes out at Cohn to make himself
feel better. As their Brett-induced jealousy intensifies, so does their need to escape into nature.
Cohn's insecurity about Brett leads him to tell himself a story that he is actually the reason she
stayed in San Sebastian. Jake, meanwhile, thinks that Cohn is enjoying trying to torture him. The
Brett-driven competition is intensifying. The men are insecure about everything—Jake about Brett,
Bill about his own looks. Yet Bill has a penetrating insight about Cohn. Cohn is nice! His awfulness
is not about him being a bad person, it has more to do with how his insecurities are so obvious that
it makes the other men have to face their own hidden insecurities. And that makes the other men
dislike him. Going into nature stands as a refuge for Bill and Jake from all this social mayhem and
sadness.

Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

The next morning, Jake and Bill leave Cohn behind and board a bus to go to a small rural town of
Burguete. The bus is crowded with locals, known as Basques. One of the Basques offers Bill and
Jake a leather wineskin but when Jake goes to drink, he makes an accurate claxon noise and Jake
spills the wine. Everyone laughs. He plays the trick again and again, fooling Jake each time. Bill
doesn't understand what any of the other passengers are saying to him in Spanish, but offers his own
wine, which is eventually accepted. As the bus drives through the beautiful country of fields, farms,
and "sudden green valleys," the Basques teach Jake and Bill the right way to drink from a wineskin.
The bus stops in a town and at an Inn Jake and Bill buy a drink and try to leave a tip, but the gesture
isn't understood. Jake and Bill drink with a group of Basques, each man buying in turn. Then
everyone boards the bus again. Some distance into the journey a Basque who speaks English strikes
up a conversation with them, telling them of the fifteen years he spent in America, before sitting
back, tired from talking "American." The bus climbs and climbs into the hills. Jake describes the
landscape here as looking strange. In Burguete, they're shocked when the price of their room is as
much as it would be in Pamplona. The proprietress of the inn explains that the cost is so high
because it's the "big season," yet they soon discover that they're the only people at the Inn. But they
feel better when they learn that wine is included in the price. They decide to order a rum punch and
tell the serving girl how to make it, though Jake has to add more rum when it arrives with not
enough. They have hot soup and wine for dinner, then go to bed. Jake thinks how nice it is to be in a
warm bed with the wind blowing outside.

The need for belonging and understanding of the new culture makes vulnerable travelers of Bill and
Jake. There are rules and customs for every aspect of the trip that they are unaware of. But the sight
and promise of the country repeatedly restores them. The alarm claxon is a sound of war—that it
startles Jake every time shows just how deeply and permanently the war has affected him. The bus
journey is full of activity and new sights. Nature surrounds them and forces Jake's eye away from
his own thoughts out into the real world. Further, Jake and Bill's instincts to turn relationships into
transactions—as through the tip—aren't even understood. Good service is a relationship to those
people, not something you do for money. As the Basque man talks of America, reminding Jake and
Bill of the home they are disconnected from, Jake starts to see the landscape as a bit ominous rather
than beautiful. They are shocked at the high prices and feel cheated, only to discover that the high
prices aren't so high after all. They are so focused on money as the basis of relationships they can't
at first comprehend that it might not be. Having wanted a change of scene, Bill and Jake now try to
introduce their own familiar elements, like a rum punch, into it in order to feel like they belong.
Jake usually has trouble sleeping, but somehow being in nature, hearing the wind, eases his mind
and makes sleep something to look forward to.

13
Chapter 12
The next morning, Jake wakes before Bill and goes outside, into the fresh early morning, finds a
shed and a kind of spade and goes digging around the stream for worms. He fills two cans, watched
by goats. Back in the room, Bill says he saw Jake from the window and asks if he was burying his
money. Bill then launches into an extended riff about "irony and pity," which he says is a fad in
New York City. He tells Jake to ask the waitress for jam in an ironical way but is jokingly
dissatisfied with how Jake does it, explaining that Jake can't understand irony or pity, and will
therefore never write anything worth much, because, as an expatriate, he's lost touch with the soil, is
obsessed with sex, and wastes his time in cafés. He adds that some people think Jake is supported
by women, while others think Jake is impotent. Jake responds that he isn't impotent, he just had an
accident. Jake is afraid that Bill will stop making fun for fear of hurting his feelings. He wants him
to go on. Bill does, and they joke about a man in a story who suffered a similar accident while
riding a horse, though Bill says that in the American version of the story it's a bicycle. Bill
announces that he is more fond of Jake than he is of anyone else in the world. This is the kind of
thing, Bill adds, that he can't say in New York because people would think he was a "faggot." Bill
then explains how the Civil War was actually all a result of homosexuality, finishing with the
comment, "Sex explains it all." Soon they pack a lunch and begin the long hike to their fishing spot.
The fields are lush and green. They cross wilder and wilder streams and walk through a forest of
beech trees. Bill exclaims, "This is country." When they reach their destination they build a
makeshift cooler in a spring of water for their wine bottles. Then they split up and begin to fish.
Jake fishes with worms. He is mesmerized by the number of leaping trout he sees. He catches six
fish, and cleans and guts them right there. He finds them beautiful. Jake reads until Bill returns. He
was fly-fishing and caught fish even bigger than Jake's They have a picnic, enjoying the chilled
wine, and remembering and joking about their friends in the army during the war. Finally, they
agree that they are drunk and decide to nap. As they wind down, Bill asks Jake if he was ever in
love with Brett. Jake admits that he was, and Bill offers his sympathy. When they wake, it's late
afternoon and they had back to the inn. They meet an Englishman named Harris who they like a
great deal, and have five more days of good fishing, and play bridge at night. There's no word from
the others.

In the city, Jake and his friends are writers and artists who don't write or make art. But in the
country, Jake actually does things, which brings a peace and pleasure. Jake's desire that Bill will
continue to tease him about everything, including his injury, and his fear that Bill will stop and in
doing so not treat him like a man, finally gives the reader insight into how Jake views his own
injury. He fears that it has made him something less than a man. But Bill doesn't stop, he doesn't see
anything as different about Jake other than the fact that he is injured, and this allows Jake to think
about his injury in a different way, to accept the fact of it, and to speak about it matter-of-factly,
without having to also accept the idea that he has lost his manhood. Bill's joking diagnosis of
expatriates, meanwhile, seems fairly accurate. Bill's joke about homosexuality reveals insecurities
of his own, and of the other men. During the intensity of the war, men took care of each other, and
came to care about each other, in such naturally intense ways that they felt insecure about those
feelings once the war was over. Bill's comments also echo the ideas of the psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud, who was famously focused on how sex explained so much. But in the men's relationship to
Brett that doesn't really seem to be the case—they all seem to love her. The character for whom sex
is most meaningful is Brett, not any of the men. Bill's simple comment, "This is country," captures
the power of nature. Unlike everything in the city, it isn't something to interpret or figure out. It just
is. And that frees the men to just exist themselves within it. Physical excursion and success at
hunting bring back essential masculine pursuits to the men. They find satisfaction in the work and
ingenuity of fishing and cleaning, and in the beauty of the fish. There is still competition, but it is a
simple competition that doesn't seem to make anyone feel small or insecure. In the absence of word

14
from the others—namely Brett—and in the natural world where they feel competent and at ease,
they find that they can face the things they have been avoiding for so long—the war, their friends,
both those who lived and who died. They can even speak honestly about Brett, and Bill can offer
sincere and non-complicated support to Jake. The activities that in the city serve as desperate
distractions, in the country become a means of building relationships, of making friends.

Chapter 13
One morning at breakfast, Jake gets a letter from Mike saying that Brett fainted on the train, they
spent three days in San Sebastian for her to rest, and will arrive in Pamplona on Wednesday. Jake
realizes he doesn't know what day it is. Harris tells him it's Wednesday. Later that same day they
receive a telegram from Cohn, which says that he will arrive in Burgueta on Thursday. They
respond that instead they are returning to Pamplona that night. Before departing, Jake and Bill go to
a pub with Harris. They invite him to come to Pamplona with them, but he decides he would rather
stay and fish. Nevertheless, he says that he's had such a good time with them, and that he's not had
much fun since the war. Bill insists paying for the last drink, since Harris has paid for everything so
far. As they say goodbye, Harris gives them gifts of flies for fishing, and hopes when they use the
flies to fish they will remember what a good time they all had. They arrive in Pamplona as the
central square is being prepared for the fiesta. The others have already arrived at Montoya's hotel.
It's clear that Montoya does not think much of them. Jake and Montoya begin to talk about the
bulls. Montoya calls Jake an aficion, which is someone with genuine passion for the bulls. It's
generally agreed that an American can't have real passion for the bulls, but Jake is the exception,
and when Montoya introduces him to his friends, they realize this and put their hands on his
shoulder, as if touching him formally acknowledges their shared gift. Jake and Bill find the others at
a bar across the square. Mike and Brett are wearing traditional local hats. Bill asks Mike if he knew
Harris in the war, to which Brett responds by saying what a distinguished soldier Mike was. She
asks him to tell them stories from the war. He refuses at first, then finally tells how he once had a
dinner wit the Prince of Wales to which he had to wear his war medals, but because he no longer
had them and couldn't even remember what medals he had won, he bought some medals from
another man. Talk then turns to Mike's recent bankruptcy, which Mike says was the result of having
both false friends and creditors. Everyone starts to feel a bit gloomy given the unpleasant subject,
and they head down to watch the arrival of the bulls along with everyone else in town. The bulls are
in cages, dragged into place by men and mules, and then the gates of the cages are lifted. When
released, the bulls charge out of their cages, furious and muscles quivering. Steers (castrated males)
mill around to help calms the bulls. As Jake explains to Brett how the bull uses his horns like a
boxer, another bull is released and gores one of the steers. By the end of the unloading, the injured
steer is alone and the other steers have formed a herd. Afterwards, they go to a café and discuss the
unloading. Cohn jokes that he wouldn't want to be a steer, at which Mike erupts in fury, saying that
Cohn is exactly like a steer with Brett, always following her around. Bill takes the upset Cohn for a
walk to calm him down. Mike, meanwhile, says that Brett is very open about her affairs with men,
but that none of them were Jews who hung around like Cohn. As things settle down, they all decide
not to let it spoil the fiesta and to act as though nothing has happened, to blame it on being drunk.
Back at the hotel, Montoya and Jake agree that the bulls looked all right but that they have a bad
feeling about them. That night, despite everything, the group has a nice meal. Brett looks stunning
in a black dress, and Cohn watches her relentlessly. Jake likens it to dinners during the war, when
everyone ignored the tension and there was a feeling of inevitability. His night ends with him
feeling happy and fond of everybody.

Both Jake's jealous belief that Mike and Brett had stopped in San Sebastian for a bit of romance,
and Cohn's belief that Brett had stopped there to see him, prove to be wrong. Brett just got sick. In
the bliss of the fishing trip, free of worries, time has flown by. Jake has even lost track of the basic

15
trappings of civilization, like days of the week. But in the instant he hears from Brett, he decides to
leave the bliss behind and return to see her. Cohn, meanwhile, is once again going the wrong way at
the wrong time. There is true friendship between Jake, Bill, and Harris. They like the same things,
which seems simple, but it's not something you can say about Jake's "friends" in Paris. Yet Bill
continues to see relationships as being transactional—you bought a drink for me, I'll even things up
buy buying one for you. Harris, in contrast, gives them a gift. All he wants are the good memories.
Montoya is dedicated to bullfighting—to its passion, artistry, and singleness of purpose. He can see
that Jake's friends have none of those things, and in fact have become corrupters of those things.
But he is willing to overlook it for Jake's benefit. Jake's knowledge and passion about bullfighting
gives him membership to a special club. The need for belonging follows the group into Spain. They
all relish any opportunity to try on a different culture and get further away from their own insecure
identities. Mike's war story paints him as a true hero—a man who won medals for bravery, but
cared so little for the medals he didn't even keep them. Yet it is a long way from war to peace, and
Mike's former glory means little in this time, when money is what matters and he has lost his. When
the men get depressed, they again turn to sports as a stand-in for the war. Jake's expertise is on
display here. Note how the political dynamics of the bulls mimic the competition between the men
in the group—the strong animals group together, leaving the weak one alone. Jake and his friends
do the same, often singling out Cohn as a group. Mike's jealousy finally erupts in his attach on
Cohn, but aren't all the men like steers compared to Brett, following her around. Jake, like the
steers, is literally impotent. And that, of course, inverts the normal gender order, making Brett the
bull. But Jake and his friends don't use this conflict to change anything. They just avoid it. They
blame it on alcohol just as they blame everything else. They continue in their rut. The unexplained
'bad feeling' about the bulls is ominous. In the war, the men had to ignore the tension of the
likelihood of death coming at any moment because that was the only way to continue functioning.
And that tactic of ignoring tension works sometimes in normal life, too, as this pleasant meal
shows. But in life, ignoring things never can last for long..

Chapter 14
Jake is very drunk when he gets back to his room. As he tries and fails to fall asleep, he thinks again
about how different things are in the nighttime than during the day. He curses women, and Brett in
particular. He thinks that in order to have a woman as a friend, you have to be in love with her, but
that in the end, as in everything, you always have to pay for it—the bill always comes. He then
thinks that the key to enjoying life is to make sure you get your money's worth. But then he decides
that this philosophy is just as absurd and unhelpful as every other philosophy he's ever come up
with. Jake then starts thinking about morality and about Mike's insults of Cohn. He feels bad for
Cohn and wishes that Mike hadn't done that, but admits to himself that he enjoyed watching Mike
do it, even though later he is disgusted that he enjoyed it. The next two days in Pamplona are quiet
but full of suspense as final preparations are made for the fiesta. The group sits in the café and
watches peasants arrive on the buses. In the evening they watch a promenade through the town. In
the mornings of those quiet two days, they all keep their own time, Cohn getting shaves, Jake taking
walks, all meeting up for drinks. On the day before the fiesta, Jake goes to church and Brett wants
to come along, wanting to see him at confession but he tells her she wouldn't understand it, and so
she goes to get her fortune read by a gypsy instead.

Once more faced with the lack of distractions in the moments before sleep, Jake must wrestle with
his thoughts and the confusions of love and how to think about the world. He comes down on a
strictly transactional philosophy—you have to pay for everything you get, and should always try to
enjoy what you pay for. But in the end, this philosophy too seems to provide him with nothing to
hold onto. In the war, morality is clear: you fight to survive, to protect your friends, to defeat the
enemy. In the post-war world, jealousy and love make it more complicated. As if before a storm or a

16
battle, the suspense in the town is palpable. The sense that they are going towards something
important seems to sustain the characters. When Jake tells Brett she wouldn't understand his
confession he is saying in part that she wouldn't understand the Spanish he would say it in. But, on a
deeper level, he is saying that she wouldn't understand confession because she doesn't seem to
understand regret or even paying attention to anything you've done in the past.

Chapter 15
The next day the fiesta explodes. Jake explains that there's no other word for it. The prices of
everything go up, crowds line the wine shops and the churches. A banner proclaims "Hurray for
Foreigners!" Bill comments to Jake that they are the foreigners. A rocket, which Jake compares to a
burst of shrapnel, is set off to mark the off the official beginning of the fiesta. Then for seven days
constant music and dancing fill the town. Over those seven days everything comes to seem unreal,
to seem without consequences, and by the end of the fiesta even money comes to seem unimportant.
As a religious procession passes outside, a crowd of dancers in a wine shop dance around Brett, as
if she's an idol. Jake goes to find leather wineskins, and the shop owner sells them to him for cheap
when he learns that Jake plans to drink directly from them once they're filled. When he returns he
finds the others singing and dancing, while Mike eating with some locals. Cohn, they tell him, has
passed out. Bill says lightly that he thinks Cohn is dead. Jake finds Cohn in a back room, asleep,
dressed with garlic like a local. After his nap Cohn reappears, and the group walks to the hotel and
have a big meal. The restaurant is all changed for the fiesta, with new prices and menus. Jake has
vowed to stay up all night to see the bulls go through the streets but he turns in early to Cohn's room
because he cannot find his key. He wakes at 6am the next morning to the sound of the fireworks that
announces the running of the bulls. From Cohn's balcony he watches the crowds run through the
streets followed by the bulls, and then a roar from the bullring. After it has passed, he goes to sleep.
The bullfights begin that afternoon. Jake and Bill sit close to the action, while Brett, Mike and Cohn
sit further up in the stands. Jake warns Brett not to look when the horses get gored for fear that it
will upset her. Mike promises to look after her. Cohn, meanwhile, says he's worried he'll be bored.
Annoyed by Cohn's comment, Bill complains about Cohn's "Jewish superiority." Montoya
introduces them to a nineteen-year-old phenom of a bullfighter named Pedro Romero. Jake thinks
that Romero is the best looking boy he's ever seen. During his bullfight, Romero is fantastic,
impressively killing the bull. Jake and Montoya agree that he is a "real one." After the fight,
everyone who watched it experience the same emotional feeling, and the dancers' bodies seem to
move and undulate as a collective group. When Brett mentions Romero, Mike says she couldn't
keep her eyes off him. Mike then adds that Cohn, in contrast, was made sick by the gore. Brett says
she wants to sit below next time to see everything, including Romero up close. She marvels that he
is only nineteen. During Romero's next bullfight, Brett sits next to Jake, who explains Romero's
skill to her move by move. He shows her how Romero turns the bull with his cape, how his
movements are pure and smooth, and how he doesn't use the trickery that other fighters use to
falsely create the emotion of near misses. Mike jokes that Brett is falling in love with Romero and
tells Jake to say something disparaging about bullfighters, such as that they beat their mothers.
When Brett comes out of the bullring, she is "limp" from all the excitement. The next day, Romero
doesn't fight and the next there are no fights scheduled, but the fiesta rages on regardless.

The celebration of foreigners is meant to make the different people who come to the fiesta feel at
home, but it also highlights that they are foreigners. And Bill points out that he and the others in the
lost generations are always foreigners, because they have no real home. The s hrapnel-like rocket
connects the fiesta to the war—both are so intense, filled with passionate feeling, that they feel
unreal and make even money seem insignificant. Both are things you can get lost in. The
simultaneous religious festival furthers this sense of fervent community and loss of self. Yet Brett's
beauty continues to make her stand out. Jake, with his knowledge of local culture, seems like

17
something other than a foreigner, accepted by the locals. The other friends also seem to fall happily
into the fiesta, Even Cohn is dressed like a local, though he can't seem to handle the intensity of the
party. Food, sleep and the sharing of each other's space characterize a new closeness for the group.
The shared quarters and all-night, vigil-like observance of the fireworks is reminiscent of trench life
during the war, watching for falling mortars. The excitement and energy of the coming bullfight
ease their competition and Jake's insomnia. The bullfight promises intensity similar to the war,
putting Jake and the other men briefly back in the role of trying to protect the women (i.e. Brett).
Cohn, meanwhile, who didn't fight in the war overcompensates with his comments, revealing his
deeper insecurity. Romero is a model of youth and vigor, everything Jake and the others used to be
back during the war. These qualities, and his passion for bullfighting, make him something more
"real" than other men. The fiesta is a collective experience. Jake and his friends have been looking
for this—the belonging and grandeur they've been missing. Brett experienced the war just as the
other veterans did, and was liberated by it. The gore of the bullfight didn't bother her. Cohn never
fought in the war, and can't handle the gore. Brett, meanwhile, has become enamored of the pure
Romero, who is now what all the men who follow her around once were. The language used to
describe the bull is almost sexualized, describing a kind of seduction, connecting the danger of the
bullfight to the dangers of love and sex. Physical skill and physical success attract Brett. Jake has all
the knowledge and experience but cannot win out against health, youth, and a willingness to stare
death in the face without blinking or trickery. Neither can Mike, whose jokes about Brett falling for
Romero masks a real, and legitimate, insecurity.

Chapter 16
The next day is rainy, foggy, and dull. Jake is in his room when Montoya enters and asks for some
advice – Romero has been asked to have dinner with the American ambassador. Jake understands
immediately that Montoya believes that Romero will be ruined by getting involved with America.
He advises Montoya not to give Romero the message, and they agree that such a boy shouldn't "mix
with that stuff." Jake finds his friends eating dinner. They are too drunk now for him to catch up,
and so he goes over instead to Romero, who's eating with a bullfighting critic. They all speak a little
bit of different languages and translate back and forth. Romero tells his life story, how he learned
bullfighting in Malaga. Romero is anxious not to seem arrogant, but is also passionate and proud: he
says he will show them both how good he is during his fight tomorrow. Brett and Mike shout to
Jake from across the room. Mike wants him to tell Romero that "bulls have no balls," while Brett
asks to be introduced. Jake apologizes for his friends' drunkenness, but does introduce them,
explaining that two of them are writers while Mike is waiting to marry Brett. Mike, meanwhile, tells
Romero in English, which Romero doesn't understand, about Brett's crush. The others quiet him.
They all toast to Pedro Romero, then Pedro moves on and Brett exclaims again how lovely he
looks. Mike now once again starts to insult Cohn, shouting at him to go away, begging him to see
when he isn't wanted, and asking Jake to back him up in his assessment of Cohn. Mike and Cohn
are on the brink of fighting, until Jake finally drags Mike out. As the last day of the fiesta
approaches, English and American tourists pour into the town. Bill runs into a friend of his named
Edna, and he and Mike decide to go off and make fun of the English tourists. Brett decides to stay
behind. Cohn tries to stay with her, but she snaps at him to get going because she wants to talk
alone with Jake. When they're alone, Brett complains to Jake about Mike and Cohn's behaviors,
both of which she finds disgusting. Jake defends Mike, saying how hard it's been on Mike to have
Cohn around, but she begs him not to "be difficult." Brett and Jake take a walk to the old
fortifications around the town. Brett asks Jake if he still loves her. When he says he does, she then
tells him that she is "mad about the Romero boy." She apologizes for being a "bitch," but says "I've
got to do something I really want to do. I've lost my self-respect." Jake agrees to help, and they go
to a café where Romero is sitting with other bullfighters and critics. Jake predicts that Romero will
come over to see them, and sure enough he does. He accepts Jake's invitation to sit. The attraction

18
between Romero and Brett is immediately obvious: Brett playfully holds his hand and reads his
fortune. Jake then translates as they talk about bullfighting. Romero says the bulls are his best
friends. When Brett asks if he kills his friends, he says he does, so they don't kill him. Jake leaves
Brett and Romero at the table, and as he does so he notices that bullfighters and critics with whom
Romero was speaking earlier look at him disapprovingly. When Jake returns a little later, Romero
and Brett are gone.

The need to preserve Romero as the symbol of pure masculinity is important to both Montoya and
Jake. As such, they feel they have to protect him from the world, from money, from women, so that
Romero can focus on bullfighting. The bullfight connects men of different occupations and
languages just like the war did. Jake is drawn to it, and at the same time repelled by the old empty
pursuits of his friends. Romero is a true man—passionate, skillful, and knowledgeable, confident
but humble. Mike, in contrast to Jake, feels only threatened by Romero and therefore tries to take
him down a few notches with his bluster. But bluster won't affect someone like Romero (just as it
probably wouldn't have affected a young Mike). At this point, Romero literally does not understand
Brett's crush on him—he is still pure. Mike transfers his insecurity driven anger towards Cohn, the
usual scapegoat. Mike feels weak, so he attacks someone seemingly weaker. Bill and Mike pick on
the English as foreigners, but they themselves are foreigners. The group wants to belong to the
bullfight society but their identities are all mixed up. Cohn, meanwhile, continues to try to be with
Brett, not really understanding that it isn't returned. Brett sees any neediness or insecurity as gross.
Even though he feels such things, Jake never displays them before Brett. But note how Brett refuses
to face it when Jake vaguely places some of the blame on her for Mike's behavior, since is the
reason Cohn is there at all. Brett treats Jake's love of her like something that allows her to get him to
do what she wants. And it does! Further, notice that Brett hasn't lost her self-respect because of how
she's acted. She's lost her self-respect because she hasn't yet acted on her feelings about Romero.
Though she knows it means that she will act like a "bitch," she can only respect herself when she is
doing what she wants. Jake once more, because of his love for Brett, sacrifices himself. Now, for
Brett, he betrays that stance, betrays the purity of the bullfighting for which he is so passionate,
because of his love for Brett. Romero's comments about friends put starkly what the novel has been
showing all around: friends are also rivals. Jake does more than sacrifice his own love for Brett.
Earlier he agreed with Montoya that Romero must be protected in order to preserve his innocence,
and passion for bullfighting. Now, in the disapproving stares of the bullfighters, it becomes clear
that Jake has willingly sacrificed the purity and passion of bullfighting to please Brett.

Chapter 17
Jake finds Bill, Mike and Bill's friend Edna hanging around outside a bar that they were thrown out
of because they nearly started a brawl among the English and American tourists. They go to another
café, where Cohn finds them. He demands to know where Brett is. Jake claims not to know, but
Cohn doesn't believe him. Mike says that Brett has gone off with the bullfighter. Cohn, now really
angry, asks Jake for the truth but Jake says only that Cohn should go to hell. Cohn calls Jake a
pimp, and Jake responds by taking a swing at him. A brawl erupts in which Cohn knocks down
Mike and knocks Jake out cold. When Jake comes to, he is surrounded by people tugging at him,
like a boxer on the ropes. He listens as Mike and Edna talk, then decides to return to the hotel. As he
walks across the square, everything seems to look different somehow. It all reminds him of a time
when he was a boy and he came home from a football game. When Jake gets in to the hotel, Bill
tells him that Cohn wants to see him. Jake doesn't want to, but finally gives in when Bill insists. He
finds Cohn lying face down in his bed, in the dark, crying. Cohn apologizes and begs to be forgiven.
He says he can't stand being like this about Brett. Jake is resistant, but after Cohn says that Jake is
the only friend he has, Jake does forgive him and shakes his hand. He says he'll see Cohn in the
morning but Cohn tells him he's leaving. Jake goes to bed. The next morning, Jake learns from a

19
waiter at a café that Mike and Bill have already gone to the stadium to await the bullfighting. Soon
the bulls are released to run through the streets to the stadium, the crowd running in front of them.
The bulls gore one man, who dies. The crowd just runs around the body on their way to the stadium.
Jake returns to the café and discusses what just happened with the upset waiter, who says that
bullfighting is senseless and that a man just died, "All for sport. All for pleasure." Back in the hotel,
as Jake tries and fails to sleep, he curses Cohn for believing in true love. Then Mike and Bill knock
on the door. They tell him about what happened with Cohn after Jake left the night before. Cohn
found Romero and Brett together. He professed his love once more to Brett, and hit Romero over
and over, but Romero would not back down and wanted to keep on fighting. Finally, he refused to
hit Romero any more, at which Romero hit Cohn with all his strength before himself collapsing to
the floor. Brett then lit into Cohn, who, weeping, tried to shake Romero's hand. Romero just
punched him again. The pattern continued, Cohn crying, Brett scolding, Romero trying to fight.
Now, in the morning, Brett is still caring for Romero. Mike says that he would like to just stay
drunk, and admits that the whole thing is not very pleasant for him. Later that day, Mike berates
Brett for having affairs with "Jews and bullfighters." She responds that the British aristocracy is no
better. Her ex-husband, Lord Ashley, used to regularly threaten to kill her and slept with a loaded
gun that she would secretly unload every night. Mike says it's a shame that she's had an unhappy
life because she "enjoys things so." Mike heads off to bed, and Bill soon follows. As Bill is leaving,
Jake asks if Bill has heard about the man who was gored outside the bullring He hasn't.

As in the war, people form alliances on nationalist grounds in order to feel powerful. Cohn
continues to act like a noble lover out of old stories, defending his own and Brett's honor. Jake, in
contrast, sacrifices his own love for Brett and lies to protect her. But Cohn's silly nobility makes
Jake uncomfortable and he lashes out. Cohn, meanwhile, who has always refused to take boxing out
of the ring now breaks this moral rule and, pushed by the passion of love, punches the man he
considers to be his best friend. After the fight, the world looks different because Jake senses that
something has changed. And he is thrown back in his memories to his youth, back to when football
mattered to him (just as it still matters to Cohn), back before the war. Cohn is crushed—he has
broken the moral rules he lived by, he has betrayed himself, he has attacked Jake, for love, and he
can't stand it. Rather than stand it, Cohn decides to leave. Jake, meanwhile, is resistant to accepting
Cohn's apology, but ultimately does give in, as he almost always does. And Jake does nothing so
dramatic as break the repetitive cycle of his life, such as Cohn does in leaving. Jake idealizes the
bullfights because it is like war with rules. It has all the intensity with none of the messiness. But
just as violence has exploded among his friends to "gore" Cohn, now the violence of the bullfight
escapes the arena and kills a man. And as the shopkeeper notes, compared to a man's life, sport is
meaningless. The men of the Lost Generation all follow the same pattern of unending conflict and
avoiding that conflict through drink or distraction, without any resolution. The pattern is only
broken by the following of morning after night, not by a winner or loser. But Cohn and Romero
distinguish themselves as different from the Lost Generation: Romero by honorable standing up for
himself, by refusing to give in to anything, even Cohn's superior strength, and Cohn by believing in
true love as something worth fighting for and then by leaving when he realizes what he has turned
himself into. Brett's determination to be free, to do as she wants, now has its source: her terrified
existence under the thumb of her former husband whom, it seems clear, was badly psychologically
damaged by the war. That Jake is still focused on the dead man suggests that something has
changed for him, that the remembrance of the man may be more important to him than the ideal of
bullfighting. But that Bill hadn't heard about the man's death suggests that the world will continue to
prize the ideal and mythic power of sport over the life of a man.

20
Chapter 18
By the next morning, Cohn has left Pamplona. Brett, looking beautiful but with shaking hands,
meets Jake, Bill, and Mike at a café. She reports that Romero was badly hurt by Cohn last night, but
still wants to perform in his scheduled bullfight. Mike angrily comments "Brett's got a bullfighter.
She had a Jew named Cohn, but he turned out badly." Brett asks Jake to go for a walk with her. As
they depart, Mike tips over the café table with all the food and beer on it. Brett and Jake take a
walk. Soon, they see a chapel and Brett wants to go in and pray, but then changes her mind, saying
she and religion do not go well together. Jake protests that religion works for him, but Brett doesn't
believe him. When they reach the hotel, Montoya bows to them but doesn't look happy to see them.
Brett goes to Romero's while Jake checks in on Mike. Mike's room is a mess, and he drunkenly
slurs that he is trying to get some sleep and repeats "Brett's got a bullfighter." Jake leaves him, and
goes to have lunch with Bill before the last round of bullfights. The bullfights begin with a
procession and pageantry. Brett is mesmerized at the matadors' bloodstained capes, and marvels at
how unphased they all are by blood. They see the three matadors who will perform that day,
Romero in the middle. His face is obscured but he looks beaten up. Romero removes his cape and
hands it up to Brett to hold in the stands. The first bullfighter to perform is named Belmonte.
Belmonte has come out of retirement for the fight, and in his retirement has become legendary for
how close he would stand to the bulls when he used to fight. But Belmonte proves unable to live up
to what the crowd expects from him, even though he fights bulls he himself has selected because
they are less difficult, and the crowd turns against him, jeering and insulting him. Romero is up
next. Romero has greatness, Jake says. His passion for the bulls was like his passion for Brett,
strong, because he didn't show it. He didn't look up to the stands, or show off, but instead kept it all
inside. In his bullfight, Romero is tentative at first with a particular bull that is troublesome because
it doesn't see well, but Romero never gives in, getting closer and closer, with smooth, subtle
movements and an intimate awareness of the animals. Eventually Romero strikes the bull in such a
way that he seems for a moment to be at one with it. After that first kill, Romero gets braver and
braver. He displays beautiful bullfighting, giving the audience a heart-dropping emotional
experience. He faces and kills the bull that had earlier gored the man outside the stadium, and gives
the bull's ear to Brett as a trophy. The crowd lifts its hero, who is uncomfortable with this adulation,
and carry him off. After the bullfights, Jake and Bill have lunch at the hotel. Jake is feeling sad, and
gives in to Bill's urging that he drink three absinthes in a row, which makes him feel slightly better.
Bill says he is sorry for Cohn, and Jake speculates that he'll go back to Frances. Despite everything
they agree that the fiesta was good, a "wonderful nightmare." Jake once again feels sad. He follows
Bill's advice and keeps drinking, but it doesn't help. Later on, a very drunk Jake goes to Brett's
room. There he finds Mike, who tells him that Brett has left Pamplona with Romero by train. Jake
makes his way to his own room and tries to sleep. The room spins. Later, Bill and Mike come to see
him but he pretends to be asleep. When the world stops spinning, Jake goes downstairs and is
greeted warmly by Mike and Bill, but as they sit and eat, their company seems empty to him.

The fiesta has changed the whole status of the group. Brett has transferred her attention to Romero,
and everyone is both physically and emotionally injured. Brett outwardly appears to be unscathed,
but the shaking of her hands suggests otherwise. Mike's insecurity seems to have made him almost
crazy. Jake now identifies himself as having a religion, as being a part of something. Brett does not,
and can't imagine that Jake might be being honest. Montoya no longer feels positively toward Jake,
who he believes has betrayed the purity of Romero. Mike, as is typical, hides from his sadness
behind drink. It is noteworthy that Jake does not. Brett has taken on Jake's aficion feelings about
bullfighting. She loves this combination of artistry and controlled violence, grace and death.
Romero, looking injured, is no longer as pure as he was. Belmonte serves as a kind of symbol of the
Lost Generation, who can no longer live up to their former glory and legend, and who use tricks and
bluster to try to fake it, fooling no one including themselves. Jake values a man who combines

21
passion with self-control, who is self-sufficient. Jake tries to look like such a man, but his love of
Brett, a love he can't consummate, makes that impossible. It seems at first that Romero has been
affected by Brett and the beating he received from Cohn (it's possible to see the bull as symbolizing
Cohn, who was often accused by others of not seeing when he wasn't wanted). But Romero never
gives in. Bullfighting is both beauty and destruction. Man and nature collide and there is a sense of
unity and harmony at the moment of death. Romero overcomes his masculine insecurity, and puts
Brett in a traditional female role as recipient of the trophy h wins. The exchange of passions
between the bull and the fighter create a kind of drama for the audience. There is something about
the fiesta that is indescribable. It is a strange meeting of horror and joy, and in its passing they feel
low and once again turn to drinking as a way to try to both artificially recapture that intensity of
feeling and to distract themselves from their old sadness. With Brett—the person for whom he
sacrificed everything, his own love, his love of bullfighting— gone, Jake's world contains a void his
friends can't fill. Usually Jake fills that void with company and tries to avoid sleep, but now he even
avoids company and pretends to sleep, he is so sure that nothing can help him.

Chapter 19
In the quiet of the sudden end of the fiesta, Mike, Bill, and Jake decide to share a cab to leave
Pamplona. Montoya does not say goodbye. Soon they have driven out of Spain and are back in
France. In Biarritz, they stop at a bar to drink, and gamble to pay the bill. They gamble until Mike is
out of money. He has twenty francs left in the world. He adds that Brett also has no money, since
she gave it to Montoya to cover Mike's debts. Jake is concerned when he hears about Brett. Bill
says they might as well have more drinks. In Bayonne, they drop Mike at his hotel, where he tells
them not to worry about money, and Bill catches his train. Jake watches the train leave, then goes
back to the car. The driver tries to over-charge him, but Jake doesn't haggle and returns to the same
hotel and room that he, Bill and Cohn had before. He notices that it feels both "strange" and "safe"
to be back in France. Alone in Bayonne, Jake eats alone, enjoying choosing wine and drinking
slowly. He worries, however, that he has offended the waiter so he over tips. It seems to him that
people have an easier time being happy in France than in Spain, and decides that he hates leaving
France. Nonetheless, in the morning he catches the train to the Spanish seaside town of San
Sebastian rather than return to Paris. In San Sebastian, Jake rests, goes swimming, sits in the sun,
and walks around the harbor. He has dinner in the hotel alongside a company of French and Belgian
cyclists. Jake discusses how sporty France has become with one of the cyclists, but mostly the man
talks and drinks and Jake does not make much reply. The next day Jake gets a telegram from Brett,
saying she is in trouble, followed quickly by another, asking him to come to Madrid. Jake takes an
overnight train, but does not sleep. Instead, he watches the country pass by out of the window, but
does not "give a damn about it." When he arrives at Brett's hotel, she kisses him. She explains that
she sent Romero away, but wrote to Jake because she wasn't sure if she could actually get him to
leave and had no money to leave herself. She then explains that Romero wanted her to grow out her
hair and look like a real woman, and wanted to marry her so she could never leave him. But Brett
refused, both because she doesn't want to ruin him and because she doesn't want to ruin children.
She says she wants to go back to Mike, and seems determined, but starts crying and demands they
don't talk about it anymore. Jake and Brett go to lunch. Brett has a drink, which steadies her. She
says she's decided not to be a bitch. Since she never got on well with religion, she says, this
resolution is what she has instead of God. During lunch, Brett asks Jake not to get drunk, but he
continues to drink anyway. Jake suggests they go for a ride and they get a taxi and sit close together
as it drives. The day is hot and bright. As they pass a policeman directing traffic and raising a red
baton, Brett laments that if only things were different "we could have had such a damned good time
together." Jake replies, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

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With the fiesta over, it is clear that they do not belong in the town anymore, as the locals get back to
their ordinary lives. They were tourists like the rest. Jake has destroyed his relationship with
Montoya, and by extension with bullfighting. Without the fiesta's distractions, the men get back to
their old pursuits to keep the spirit of competition alive. Money once more becomes a defining
characteristic of their relationships. Mike warns them of the dangers of thinking of the world in
terms of money. Jake takes this heart as he does not haggle with the driver. He returns to the same
room, but it feels different, indicating that he has changed. Jake is not drinking or eating here
merely for distraction. He is actually enjoying it for its own sake. But he hasn't changed completely:
he still tries to smooth over relationships with money, and he still feels the almost compulsive need
to keep moving and travel to new places. Sleep and water and solitude restore Jake. He goes back to
nature in order to start afresh. Competition, sport and masculine insecurity is ongoing. Jake
recognizes it in the group of cyclists. The cycle of Brett's love story is never ending, as is Jake's
sense of duty toward Brett. In the face of Brett's troubles, Jake doesn't care about the landscape.
Brett always turns to Jake, the one whose love is always true because it can never be consummated,
when she's in trouble. Romero, unlike the other men in Brett's life, never gives up his traditional
masculine role and tries to force Brett into a traditional feminine role. Brett seems to both admire
that in him and does not want to ruin it, but also refuses to give up her freedom. She seems to see
her insistence on maintaining her freedom as both a victory and a loss, as something necessary to
her but also something she wouldn't want to pass on to children. And she slips right back into her
old patterns, in the form of relying on Jake and going back to Mike. As usual, after expressing
themselves, the Lost Generation goes back to avoidance—they drink. Brett replaces religion with a
personal directive containing language that most people at the time would consider filthy. As usual,
it is motion and the promise of a journey that inspire them to be affectionate while they can. The
policeman's raised baton is a symbol of Jake's impotence. In her last line, Brett reiterates the idea
that if only Jake weren't injured that she and Jake would have been happy together. This is a
sentiment that Jake too has felt and believed in the past. But Jake's response indicates that he has
changed, and is able to face some harsher truths. He realizes that the only reason that their love
seems like it might work is that it can't actually work. He sees that if he were another ordinary man
that Brett would tire of him just as she would tire of others. Yet he describes this false belief in a
perfect love that is so close and yet unattainable as pretty. In other words, he expresses regret and
pleasure at once, which defines the impossible nature of his era and experience.

The Lost Generation Theme Analysis

Though seldom mentioned, World War I hangs like a shadow over the characters in The Sun Also
Rises. The war devastated Europe, wiping away empires and long-standing governments. Similarly,
its brutal trench warfare and machine-driven killing made clear to all of its participants that the
long-standing ideals of honor, courage, and stoicism were hollow and meaningless, as were the
national identities that drove the countries of Europe to war in the first place. In short, the war
changed all those who experienced it, and those who came of age during the war became known as
"the lost generation." Through Jake and his friends and acquaintances, The Sun Also Rises depicts
members of this lost generation. Jake and his friends believe in very little. While in some ways this
is liberating, it is also depicted as a loss. In losing their belief in the ideals, structures, and
nationalism that drove self-identity in the time before the WWI, they seem to have lost some core of
themselves. The characters are always restless, always wandering, looking for a constant change of
scenery, as if looking for an escape. They would prefer to live in America than Europe, but for some
reason they don't leave. The characters have made themselves expatriates, disconnected from their
home, sampling the cultures of Europe without ever joining them. There is a sense that Jake and his

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generation don't belong anywhere. Though many of Jake's friends have occupations, in writing and
editing, these jobs don't seem to have regular hours and none of them are accountable to any boss or
location. The characters spend their time socializing, drinking, dancing, and playing games. Though
these activities are usually seen as youthful pursuits, in such endless repetition they become empty
and wearying, and part of a vicious cycle in which the characters are always thinking of the next
escape. Of all the characters, only Cohn seems to not fit this description of a lost generation. He has
an identity forced on him: he's Jewish. And he has ideals—romantic, perhaps silly ideals—but still
ideals. It's not a coincidence that he is the only male character in the novel not to have experienced
the war first hand. Yet in the course of the novel even Cohn betrays his ideals, suggesting that while
the loss of belief in the old systems is a terrible personal loss, it also just may be a more accurate
view of the world.
Sport
From Robert Cohn the boxer to Pedro Romero the bullfighter, the characters of The Sun Also Rises
compete and combat in various sporting events for honor and to impress the insatiable Brett.
Whenever a trip is proposed, there is usually some sporting reason—Jake and Bill Gorton travel to
Spain to fish, and the whole crowd is drawn to the bullfighting at the fiesta. Sport provides an
escape for Jake and his friends from what they see as the meaninglessness of the rest of their lives.
Sports have rules, and those rules define winners and losers, define beauty and skill.
And yet, like World War I erupting from the carefully balanced tensions of Europe in the 1910s, for
the characters of The Sun Also Rises, the matches spill over from the arenas onto the streets of
Pamplona, into the bars and cafes. Violence that should be controlled becomes threatening. A man is
killed by a bull outside Pedro Romero's bullfight. And the male characters' competition over the
careless, rule-breaking Brett turns them into sportsmen of sorts, competitors for her love. Rules,
tactics, and victories in the form of insults or emotional injuries become "moves" in the game of
social power. When Robert Cohn boxes at Princeton, he refuses to fight anyone outside of the ring.
He follows the rules of sport and honor. But as Robert becomes unhinged by his obsession with
Brett, he starts a brawl.

Masculinity and Insecurity

There is only one main female character in The Sun Also Rises, and the men circle around Brett like
bees to honey, creating an atmosphere of rivalry between the male characters. The competition
between the men is won and lost in different, often unpredictable, ways. Sometimes it is physical
vigor that wins out, in the case of Romero. But sometimes physical strength is a liability. Robert
Cohn strikes out at Mike, Bill and Romero, overpowering them physically, but later is found alone
and crying. For men in The Sun Also Rises, to win seems impossible.
In this way, The Sun Also Rises shows how men have been changed by the experience of war, and
World War I in particular. Honor, courage, stoicism, glory—none of these traditional masculine
traits meant a thing huddled in the trenches as mortars fall from the sky. There was no glorious clash
of skill between two warriors. There were just men getting cut down by machine gun fire in a futile
effort to move their trench forward another inch. All of the men have been damaged by the war,
their sense of selves demolished because none of what they were taught about themselves as men
seems to apply any more, and they are all made so insecure by this loss that they can't even discuss

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it. The cruelty of the men toward Cohn emerges not just because Cohn is so obviously acting in
non-manly ways in his desperate pursuit of Brett, but rather because the men know that they
themselves, secretly, are just as unmanned. Jake himself is a symbol of all of these dynamics of
masculinity and insecurity. He has literally, physically been emasculated by a genital injury in the
war, but that injury is never directly mentioned by anyone. Brett's behavior further brings into play
the idea or value of manliness. Just as the men display traditionally feminine behavior, Brett, with
her short haircut, bantering conversation, and constant desire for sex, is the most traditionally
"masculine" character in the novel, and the fact that she comes off as something of a heartless
monster raises questions about whether those traditional manly virtues were even virtues at all. And
yet, without them, what are the men?

Sex and Love

The romantic partners in The Sun Also Rises change suddenly and frequently. The relationships are
made and broken along the journey from country to country and, though marriage is sometimes
mentioned, it is never actually attempted other than Cohn's disastrous and unhappy first marriage.
The characters do not establish domestic lives for themselves. The nightly drinking parties and long
leisurely meals in public places serve as the primary domestic activity of the novel. The occupations
and movements of the characters are aimless and restless. So, too, is love. It is avoided and ignored.
But while the insecurities of the male characters cause them to avoid love and sex, Brett excels as a
sexual being. She is healthy, charismatic, and lives like the ideal bachelor. She has sex without
being married and without feeling ashamed. The typical attitudes of men and women have been
troubled and upturned by the changes of wartime. The men have been shackled. Brett has been
liberated. At the same time, in her last lines of the novel, even Brett is revealed to yearn for love,
with Jake. At numerous points in the novel it seems that Jake and Brett share a real love, and could
be a true couple, if only Jake did not have the injury that made him impotent. And yet Jake, in his
response, "Isn't it pretty to think so," dashes even that idea. In his response he is saying that the only
reason Brett, Jake himself, or anyone else could imagine that their love might be perfect, might be
an answer to all the meaningless of postwar life, is because his injury makes it impossible. If Jake
was not injured and a relationship between he and Brett were possible, he is saying, it wouldn't end
any better than any of her other relationships. And so The Sun Also Rises ends with the suggestions
that just like all the other ideals obliterated by World War I, love, too, is no answer to the emptiness
of the lost generation and perhaps, more broadly, to the emptiness of life.

Nature
The social scene in The Sun Also Rises takes place mostly in bars, cafes and restaurants. Between
the meals and drinks are journeys along Parisian streets and across the square in Pamplona. For
most of the novel, there is a noticeable lack of natural landscape. The action is urban and repetitive.
There are descriptions of drinking and dialogue instead of the sky or the weather. There is also a
sense that since the war, civilization has been moving away from nature and from natural
experiences. The characters are dissatisfied with city life and suggest trip after trip to try to find
satisfaction, but these urban rituals keep repeating themselves, until Jake's brief excursions into
nature, which give momentary peace and escape. There are several of these excursions, including
the bullfight, with its display of the violence of nature, and Jake's trip to the sea, where he steps out

25
into the water and finds simple pleasure in being able to see only the sky around him. Then there is
also the fishing trip that Jake takes with Bill, which Hemingway describes in language that lacks the
undercurrents of emptiness and dissatisfaction present in the city scenes. "This is country," says Bill
as they arrive in the beautiful area they have chosen for their fishing – both men feel that the natural
landscape has something real and essential in it that the town does not have.

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